Talk:Tanking: An Alternative Approach
The tone/point of view of this article is...bad... Jackimole 19:11, April 4, 2010 (UTC) :Care to elaborate? (a) The tone or the point of view? These terms denote two very different things. (b) How exactly the tone is bad? Personally, I think it's quite neutral. It's a guide, and an alternative guide at that, so I do mention (and oppose) certain views on tanking in the article. © Now, how can a point of view possibly be bad? Even theoretically? You can surely disagree with my POV - hell, why not, that's your right! But it kind of goes without saying it does not make my POV 'bad'. IN 11:19, April 5, 2010 (UTC) This should be merged to Tank or put on the Tank talk page. There is no need for it's own article. 22:24, February 15, 2010 (UTC) 98.225.39.74's comments *If you disagree with the point of view expressed in this (or, indeed, any) article, and/or wish to comment on it, please use Talk page first. The article itself should not be used for posting comments and asking questions. Of course, if you wish to post any factual or grammatical corrigenda, feel free to modify the text. (edit: unless you consider being dead or repeatedly drinking healing potions a hindrance to your ability to generate/maintain threat - though dying is an excellent way to remove your threat) *I'm afraid my linguistic skills fail me here :) That was supposed to be an ironic comment? Do you wish to say that following my guidelines will eventually lead to heavy use of health poultices or death? If so, it's, ahem, ungrammatical. (edit: it is unclear where the author has acquired this information as the Missing Manual seems to contradict this by stating that Frightening Appearance, despite its in-game description, provides no passive benefits to the Threaten talent; see http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/abilities/talents/frightening_appearance/ for more info) *At least, the second comment is phrased clearly enough :) Regarding my sources. (I) First and foremost, I tend to rely on thorough testing. The methodology used was as follows: a mage with 100 spellpower was hitting pre-Fort Drakon Ser Cauthrien for 400+ damage with Entropic Death. Then a Reaver without Frightening Appearance was trying to re-draw threat from the mage using Taunt. It was a consistent failure. Then the same Reaver with Frightening Appearance added via console was trying to do exactly the same thing during the same scenario. It was a consistent success. I've tried it 5 times with each setup (FA-less and FA-enabled). (II) Also, please familiarize yourself with this nice little project: http://social.bioware.com/project/1117/ The author was actually just reading the game scripts. Please note Georg Zoeller's Missing Manual, with all due respect, covers DA:O 1.00, while Detailed Tooltips project provides up-to-date information as of version 1.02a/b. (III) Still not satisfied? I encourage you to conduct your own experiments and post technical feedback here. Anyway, thanks for your input! IN 20:47, February 21, 2010 (UTC) **I didn't post the above statement, but note, he doesn't contradict the statement about Frightening Appearance affecting Taunt, only that it doesn't affect threaten. Did you test this as well? I'm assuming this would be somewhat harder to do. Tivadar 20:53, February 21, 2010 (UTC) ***A nice catch, thanks :) No, I didn't test Threaten. All I have to say in my defense is: (a) Detailed Tooltips never failed me as a source of reliable information, and that's the info it has on FA: "Frightening Appearance also increases the effectiveness of Taunt by 25% and Threaten by 100%"; (b) not much value to such subjective criteria, admittedly, but I think I can notice the difference between tanking with Threaten+Frightening Appearance and with just Threaten empirically. IN 21:03, February 21, 2010 (UTC) *Judging by my experience, something is seriously wrong with either my installation of the game or the spell resistance section of this article. I have Alistair with Knight Commander's Plate, Spellward, Yusaris with two Master Dweomer Runes, and Ancient Elven Gloves. He should have 90% spell resistance and be nearly invulnerable to friendly fire from spells, right? Nope. When I cast Cone of Cold with him in the area, he consistently freezes and takes damage. When I cast Fireball with him in the area, he consistently takes a lot of damage and, if I turn off Indomitable, often gets knocked down. If I send him into an Inferno I cast, he starts burning every time. This happens both in and out of actual combat. I've seen "Resisted" pop up over his head when enemy mages cast at him plenty of times, but it never happens for friendly fire. This is on Hardcore difficulty on the PC. I'm starting to suspect Alistair's immunity to friendly fire in the author's experience might be due to playing on Normal on the PS3 or XBOX where friendly fire is universally disabled, as my testing has shown that spell resistance does not seem to protect from friendly fire at all. Douglas m 15:06, March 3, 2010 (UTC) ::You are absolutely right, I need to rephrase/update the article. As of patch 1.02+, spell resistance is, indeed, a chance to ignore hostile magic. That was developers' intent from the very start, but in original version 1.00, it didn't work that way (in a nutshell, there were two separate unconnected checks in the script -- hostile/non-hostile and mage/non-mage: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/394286/1). As a side note: you could have voiced your 'suspicions' ('I'm starting to suspect' was one hell of a hilarious wording, actually) in a somewhat less disrespectful and snubby manner, methinks. Update: edited out the obsolete information about being immune to friendly fire, rephrased the 'Magic Immunity' paragraph. Thanks a lot again, Mr Suspicious! :) IN 15:39, March 3, 2010 (UTC) :: Ah, so it got changed in a patch. I'm sorry if my phrasing was overly hostile, the difficulty setting was just the only explanation I could think of, in large part because that strikes me as a really nonsensical change to make. If I can ignore a Fireball, why should it matter whether the Fireball is coming from an enemy or a friend? If you're going to make a distinction for which spells to ignore, it should be on whether it's a beneficial or harmful spell, not on who's casting it. I'm seriously tempted to find out how to edit the game scripts and change it to that distinction myself. But, that's an issue to take up with Bioware, not you. Douglas m 16:19, March 3, 2010 (UTC) :::No problem, your comment was justified, competent and well-argumented, in the first place. Anyway, I share your frustration with spell resistance mechanics. I can see a rationale behind BioWare's point of view, too: it may be counter-logical, but it does make much sense as a balancing combat mechanic. Yet I still believe the spell resistance routine could be much better, were it implemented the good old D&D way (beneficial/harmful, not friendly/hostile distinction). IN 17:06, March 3, 2010 (UTC) First, let me say that this is a very informative article and adds a lot of useful information, but don't think this article should be merged with the main tanking article because this page is more about how to build the best tank and it needs to go into a level of detail that shouldn't bog down readers that just want to know what some of the principles of tanking are. There is a lot of useful information here that can probably be referenced in the main article and link back to this article: *'Existing Strategies': The hyperlink on evasion tanking should probably be added to the end of the main tanking article in an External Links section *'Threat Management': The main page needs a section on threat management. I think the one here is going into too much detail. I think simply mentioning that skills that generate threat directly (Taunt, Threaten, FA) are good for threat management, as well as AoE damage skills (Scattershot, Two-Handed Sweep, Holy Smite). Going into more depth (justifying scattershot damage, whether Holy Smite is worth 4 skill points) doesn't belong in the main tanking article. Also, I think that both pages should more prominently link to the Threat page. *'Stun/Knockdown Immunity': Personally, I disagree that stun/knockdown immunity is a key principle, but it is actually a subcategory under threat management- stun/knockdown immunity is needed so that the tank can generate/maintain threat on targets. It would probably be sufficient to just include a list of the various stun/knockdown resisting skills (Shield Wall, Indomitable) and that these skills do not protect against Grab and Overwhelm. *'Spell Immunity': In the main article, this should be labeled more generically as "Spell Resistance" and list the various pieces that add to spell resistance. Would also be worth mentioning that attaining 100% spell resistance is extremely powerful. *'A Note of Fire Resistance': Doesn't belong in the main tanking page. This is more geared towards dragonslaying and should definitely be mentioned in the High Dragon (Strategy) page. *'Ideal Tank Development and Gearing': Doesn't belong in the main tanking page. This is very specific advice based on applies the above three principles. :Good points, thank you! Unfortunately, currently I'm heavily involved in re-writing and updating my other guide - Archery: An Efficient Approach, as well as a whole bunch of general and specific mechanics articles, so I update this one only to gradually edit out/replace some info that is proven incorrect by further testing. That said, I'd definitely like to come back to tanking guide for a major re-write, at least after I'll see how tanking mechanics work in DAA, how much talent-based threat these new two-handed talents generate, how can Juggernaught modal ability be useful for a tank, etc., etc, etc. IN 01:57, March 15, 2010 (UTC) Dragon tanking? How late does this type of tank "peak"? I'm only lv10 now, with some nice gear though, but I got DESTROYED by Flemmeth. Basically my healer couldn't keep up with the meele damage she did. 18:25, April 22, 2010 (UTC) Another Question. I may be missing something, in fact I most likely am, but one of the main reasons for going 2H over S&S on this build is the knockdown immunity, right? Since this topic is relatively old, this may have been a patch addition, but shield expertise grants knockdown immunity to shield wall. Granted, it's later in it's tree, but I still had it in plenty of time for when it's needed; on my last playthrough Alistair tanked the High Dragon somewhere between level 10-12, only dying once when "grabbed". Does this not make S&S, though lacking an AOE attack of it's own, the better option to mix with archery? Especially with Alastair as a tank, considering he's already "invested" in that tree for you. Kind of late but... I've been replaying DA:O, and I think this article makes a good point about a two-hander's better ability to deal damage and thus generate more agro, and Indomitable's stun immunity is very nice. However, Sword and Shield gains flanking immunity with Shield Tactics, protecting him from backstabs and Coup de Grace. Shield Wall has 15s cooldown vs the 30s cooldown of Indomitable so S&S works better than 2H for switching to longbow for Scattershot and then back to primary weapon set. Also, Shield Wall + Shield Expertise + Shield Mastery gives +15 defense in addition to the defense bonus granted by the shield itself (Eamon's shield early in the game gives 4+6 defense). I guess it comes down to which kind of micro you'd rather do. With a 2H tank, you have to keep the enemies off his back (although he can help with his sweep move) or make sure he gets extensive healing. In my experience, a 2H guy with maxed-out talents goes down much faster when surrounded than a Sword and Shield guy with maxed-out talents. The tradeoff is that with Sword and Shield, you have to deal more often with the tank losing agro and the enemies coming for your damage dealers.